The following morning, I pay a visit to Jim at his Chatsworth offices in
the far northwest corner of the Valley, near the foothills of the Santa
Susana Mountains. The building, which sits on a relatively busy street,
is remarkable only for its unremarkability. In the entry room, theres
a candy-dispensing machine. In the next room, an open box sits on a
green pleather sofa. I peek inside. Two disembodied silicone breasts
stare back up at me.

The sign on the ajar office door reads: Do not ask Jim to borrow
money!!! I mean it! This door must remain closed at all times!!!!

Inside,
a glass trophy case is stocked with AVN awards from the Academy Awards
of Porn held every January in Vegas, where Powers was inducted into
the AVN Hall of Fame in 2005. Once treated as a pariah, he has won his
peers respect as a businessman who found his niche, albeit an unusual
one, and made money filling the demand for it.

The
bookshelves are lined with rows of binders, their crudely rendered titles
scrawled upon their spines: Black Snake Boned, Escape from
Womens Prison, DP Virgins: The Classic Years, Fuck Pig:
The Movie, Garbage Pail Girls #1, Mouth Meat #6. The
wall shelf behind the desk is crowded with punk rock-themed tchotchkes;
half-naked, bound, and kneeling female figurines; and the uniformed
team members of the 1972 perfect season Miami Dolphins.
On the desk there is a laptop, a womans drivers license, and a
large knife. A turquoise lace bra lies on the floor nearby.

Powers
presides over this dominion, checking his email, screening his calls,
and waxing philosophical. At a certain point during our conversation,
I realize, after all these years, whom he reminds me of—the Joker.
Not Heath Ledgers. Not Jack Nicholsons. But Cesar Romeros Joker
from the late 60s Batman TV series—the high-camp super-villain
in white face with a slit ear-to-ear grin who shrieks with delight at
the sheer genius of his own outrageous acts.

He
is a third-generation San Fernando Valley son. After his parents divorced
when he was in the fifth grade, he was shuttled back and forth between
the Valley, where his father—an architect and hardcore, rightwing
Republican who hates what I do and will not accept it—lived, and
Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his mother—who, prior to the divorce,
was a homemaker, and, after that, Well, after the divorce, she became
a belly dancer—lived. His was a bifurcated comeuppance. He was
obsessed with horror movies, punk rock music, and girls.

He
ended up at California State University, Northridge, where he majored
in business and joined a fraternity, Sigma Pi, where he became the social
chairman, a position that prepared him for his future career as a professional
ringleader: I was in charge of arranging the parties. It took
him six years to earn his bachelors degree.

After
graduation, he went into sales, which he despised. One day, he ran into
a former frat brother who was earning a ton of money as a stockbroker—of
sorts. Not long after, he moved to New York, where he became a pump
and dump broker. If youve ever seen the movie Boiler Room,
I basically worked for that firm, he explains. It was a big shell
game. They were manipulating stocks. Eventually, the SEC shut the
company down. He took a similar job in Atlanta. The SEC shut them down,
too.

Then,
he got a call from an ex-coworker down in Florida who wanted to know
if he was interested in making some kickboxing movies. What the hell
do I know about that? he wondered. Unemployed, he had nothing left
to lose. Working with a partner, he raised seed money from investors
and flew to Florida. But there was a problem. The feds had busted their
business partner for making porn movies. Were like, What?!
Powers shrieks. We cant go into business with a pornographer!
And thats how Jim got into porn.

He
moved back to the Valley to pursue his newfound dream. Things got off
to a rocky start. An early Beach Bum Amateurs shoot led to his
arrest on conspiracy and pandering charges. Making a buck off porn movies
in the Nineties was no cakewalk. He almost quit. But he kept at it.
After a time, he started getting noticed … for his unique willingness
to push the envelope. I had a baby and a wife, I had to pay the bills
somehow, and I started getting a reputation for doing these crazy things.

To
date, he has produced and directed over 500 adult movies. But, this
isnt your fathers porn. Equal parts freak show, horror movie,
and Russ Meyer-on-crack, his X-rated visions are deranged, demented,
mind-boggling expeditions into the dark, unexplored continent of human
sexual perversity. Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing—oftentimes
all of those things at the same time—Powers celluloid world is
one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with
monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto
the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all
of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win.

Take,
for example, The Bride of Dong, in which two young, unsuspecting
women inadvertently unleash the power and massive cock of an ancient
fertility god when they decide to house sit for the summer, the result
of which is the call[ing] forth an ancient being from another time
and world who bridges the cosmos to shove his massive tool up their
asses, and the true star of which is neither the decidedly comely
Gia Paloma or Julie Night but a six-foot prosthetic penis that belongs
to an onerous, fanged beast that emerges upon a full moon. (An online
reviewer noted dutifully: It's hard to possibly make anything of
this, other than to say that its vintage Jim Powers, adding, I
haven't seen a prosthetic dong this big since Boogie Nights.)

To
decry Powers-helmed series—like Gag Factor, in which women,
not infrequently, hang upside down and perform oral sex on male costars
to the point of gagging and sometimes vomiting; White Trash Whore,
in which seemingly innocent Caucasian women are gangbanged by roving
packs of African-American men, and for which the box cover copy reads,
Mom, Dad … I hate you this much!; and Young and Anal,
again, the title here is self-revelatory—as misogynist is almost
beside the point.

In
this canon, the real subject is not human sexuality but humanity itself.
The products that Jim produces are videotaped vivisections, studies
in which homo sapiens lie upon the operating table, the director is
the doctor, the camera is the scalpel, and the only question worth asking
is, How far will we go if we are pushed to our limits?

A
long time ago, I asked Jim why he makes the movies that he does. He
told me that when he was a teenager he had wanted to see what happened
to the girl in the horror movies when the camera cut away from the action.
What he had wanted was more. Hardcore, at least for a while,
took him there.

By
the time the millennium turned, porn was going mainstream; every red-blooded
American male with an Internet connection could download porn 24/7;
anybody who could afford a home video camera could declare himself a
pornographer; fly-by-night production companies were cropping up across
the Valley like weeds; low-budget gonzo porno was all the rage;
and Powers odd brand of extreme porn was flying off the shelves.
I was turning down companies asking me to shoot, he recalls today.
He was willing to go beyond the pale if thats what it took to entertain
the masses, and for that he was rewarded. It was like the last days
of Rome, he says wistfully. We were in the vomitorioums.

Then,
everything changed. In 2004, VHS fell off a cliff. DVD sales,
expected to take the place of VHS sales, werent happening in the
now glutted adult video market. I warned people. I go, You know
what? Get ready, because the fallout is about to hit. We are about to
die. Upstart online companies like Reality Kings, Brazzers, and Bang Brothers were shooting on the cheap and slapping their product on the Internet, all in the same day. Tube sites were giving pirated porn away. Forget VHS. Forget DVDs. Heck, forget movies. The Valley was floundering.

Once
upon a time, pornographers were kings. Now, content
was king. Everybody talks about content, Powers bemoans, disgusted.
What the fuck is content? he sneers. Thats what its
turned into. Content. Even that word is offensive! he shouts,
banging his fist on the desk. The average shooter, nowadays, he has
no interest in making a good movie. He shoots content. We
might as well be pimps! he hollers, waving his hands in protest.
Pimps and whores! And we shoot content!

His
voice softens. Its not near as fun as it was. Theyre just shooting
content to fill these specs they need for some website theyre shooting
for, he sniffs reproachfully. Theyre not being creative,
he pouts. Theyre not doing anything interesting.

I
debate whether or not to point out some might question the creative
caliber of his work, but dont.